A recording has turned up in Australia in which former President Bill Clinton explains why he didn’t kill Osama bin Laden, just hours before the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. He made the comment reportedly during a Sept. 10 meeting with business leaders in Australia, ABC news reports:

“And I’m just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden … He’s a very smart guy. I spent a lot of time thinking about him. And I nearly got him once,” Clinton said in the audio.

“I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have had to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him.